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Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 11:53 am
by RFguy
I'm looking for a 2-tone decoder for a hall alerting project.

I don't want to use a pager or a mobile, I'm looking for a discrete board as we are doing several levels of decode and need individual outputs to activate various features.

We tried the Midian MTSD and RT2, but they use non standard timing (long tone decodes at 3.9 seconds) and they can not deactivate long tone decoding.

We used to use a Norcom, but they were cancelled.

Any thoughts???????

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:13 pm
by jry
Midian's MTSD-3

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:30 pm
by RFguy
jry wrote:Midian's MTSD-3
Thanks, but the MTSD-3 doesn't work. It uses non standard timing (3.9 second for long tone decode) and no ability to turn off long tone decode.

Apparently the person at Midian that designed it has passed away and they don't know how to fix the design problem.

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:01 pm
by motorola_otaku
Genave RXC-3000. It's not cheap, but it'll do what you're looking for.

http://genave.com/category/controls/

I'm going to stab a guess that this is for fire station alerting... will the FedSig Informer work, or do you need more than 2 relay closures?

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:11 pm
by Satelite
Hello:
I'm not even going to say I'm sure what your actually needing but just out of curiousity.
Would a Motorola 2 tone decoder bd that was used in the Motorola p1225 or m1225 mobile work ?
I think ive got one if not two in parts bin as option for 2tone for m1225 and p1225.
Satelite

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:24 am
by RFguy
I have found this unit. A Motron 2-tone, or single tone decoder.
http://www.motron.com/product_info.php/products_id/136

It seems very flexible and will decode and output up to 4 separate 2-tone codes.
It can also be set for single tone operation.

The one drawback is it can't do 2-tone AND single tone on the same board. Once a board is set for 2-tone, it can only do 2-tone.

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:10 am
by motorola_otaku
RFguy wrote:The one drawback is it can't do 2-tone AND single tone on the same board. Once a board is set for 2-tone, it can only do 2-tone.
By "single tone" do you mean QCII long tone or Motorola singletone?

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:20 am
by RFguy
The Single tone I meant was QCII. Long tone B. An 8 second long tone where decode should occur after 5 seconds of tone is received.

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:20 am
by RFguy
Satelite wrote:Hello:
Would a Motorola 2 tone decoder bd that was used in the Motorola p1225 or m1225 mobile work ?
I think ive got one if not two in parts bin as option for 2tone for m1225 and p1225.
Thanks, but no, the M1225 decoder is not a stand alone and will not work separate from the radio.

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 9:41 am
by motorola_otaku
RFguy wrote:The Single tone I meant was QCII. Long tone B. An 8 second long tone where decode should occur after 5 seconds of tone is received.
Gotcha. Best thing I can come up with is two boards fed with split audio. At that cost it still comes out cheaper than a Genave box.

Are you having to equip multiple stations or just one?

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 10:31 am
by RFguy
Only one has long tone, all the rest (about 20) have 3 sets of 2 tone, so this Motron board will work well for most parts.

Just an FYI, what we do is use the existing hall base station and PA system for hall alert. Dispatch pagers over the frequency the hall radio is set to, so we pull decoder audio from the existing radio, outside antenna system.

We then use the individual decoder output to trip a hall bells audio generator. We use the RDL FP-CH8 Chime Generator connected to the hall PA to send a different hall alert tone for each of the 3 pager codes.

Radio audio is also connected to the hall PA through a set/reset relay. The decoder sets the relay and radio audio passes to the hall PA until a local user hits the reset button.

We are capitalizing on the existing hall equipment (radio, power system, antenna, PA) to provide hall alerting.

Re: Looking for a 2-tone decoder board

Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:26 pm
by motorola_otaku
Neat. Our setup is similar but uses a PLC to control audio routing (the stations are zoned for fire/EMS/supervisor) and the speakers are set to auto-reset. If we hadn't just bought a MACH Alert II FSA system I'd be pushing hard to replace our UHF FedSig Informers with APX mobiles and your Motron boards.

I also found this to generate alert tones: http://www.american-time.com/products-b ... generators but yours looks a little more flexible.

edit: I'd also recommend looking at Atlas Sound for your PA amps and speakers: http://www.atlassound.com
As an added bonus you can order their stuff through CDW.